bearpelt wrote:I'm wondering if shifting into Bear Form will be worth mitigating much personal damage from [Crush].

I was looking at my PvP gear the other day and watching to see the increase in mitigation from going cat to bear and it was ~17% extra physical mitigation from armor. And since Crush is physical damage you can mitigate that so if your healers are that behind it will help a tiny bit.

I found Soul Swap to be the go to for Symbiosis on this fight, with our strategy we had melee on legs most of time but occasionally we would have time to sit on the boss.

It's key to understand how Soul Swap interacts with the damage zones on this encounter. The damage buff only increases your damage to the leg who's zone you are standing in, meaning that if you swap your bleeds off a leg onto the boss they will recalculate and no longer be doing double damage. On the other side of this coin, if you have bleeds on the boss or on another leg, and you wait to soul swap them onto a new leg until AFTER you have enter that leg's damage zone, they WILL be affected by the damage multiplier.

Because of this I ended up Soul Swapping any bleeds I had gotten on the boss onto the new leg as soon as I was in the damage zone to achieve higher double damage bleed uptime. I also found it beneficial to sometimes is it to swap bleeds off of a dying leg onto the boss, but to me this seemed like less of a priority so you have to do it with caution.

It highly depends on how much DPS is allocated to legs to determine which direction you want to use your Soul Swap. If you're spending very very little time on the boss then obviously swapping onto legs won't be realistic.

Last edited by aggixx on Thu Nov 22, 2012 12:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

did you charge through the purple ring? i was seriously nervous about triggering a crash. i used charge very tentatively. The first leg... SRoar'd to some of the others. But... is charge like charging through tornadoes on blade master? That being under the boss doesn't register if you charge through part of the circle? mght be a handy tip.

Charging through the ring doesn't trigger a crush. I did however manage to trigger one because I jumped towards the purple circle and fumbled and wasn't able to hit Wild Charge before I hit the ground. In general I tried not to make charging through the circle habit but you definitely can do it.

After a full evening of wipes, I'm starting to get more comfortable with the fight.

Some random questions and comments:- it seems like while the leg (and the red target circle) moves frantically, the "melee position" is in reality the exact center of the weak spot area marker (the dashed circle), this goes against the automatic reflex to position yourself according to the red circle.- Shred seems to always work on the legs, but for the boss you need correct positioning.- I'm always trying to get a Thrash up when I remember (leg + body), since it should be good. Is it? - are non 5-CP rips on the body worth the energy? I tried Soul Swap, but the my time on the body is always short, so I don't make good use of it. The alternative is to lose the CPs (and the associated SotF energy).- I've switched Symbiosis on a SP for the dispersion, which is really good to eat up one Crush, especially when I'm DPSing the front-outside leg which often puts me out of range of the healers.- I'm sticking to HotW for the emergency tranq at the end, problem is, we wipe due to lack of DPS, so I'm not really sure that stopping my DPS helps: would it be worth dropping it for DoC? I'm often forced to use self-heals for survival, so I'm not sure I would be able to synch them right with DoTs. HotW may just be a cheap passive boost, but it's +6% agi and +6% sta guaranteed all the time...- we kite it on the edge of the room, with one leg (front-outside) which is *extremely* annoying to reach (I'm walking on the edge of the kiting path, so there are bad zones and at time the leg ends out of the encounter area so it is out of range), is there any better kiting path / DPSing position?- we've had situations where the boss turns around and insta-gibs the raid with the frontal AoE attack, even if the current pheromone target is alive and well, is this a know problem?- Wild charge works, but I'm positive I triggered a crush at least once, while crossing the violet zone quite deeply. I wonder if the "collision check" with the violet zone is done every couple of seconds or so, with the result that doing a long trajectory inside the zone can trigger it. It could also have been that I landed with one paw inside the circle since the charge brings you to the position of the target when it's cast, maybe if the boss moves while I'm flying bad things happen.....

Helistar wrote:- we kite it on the edge of the room, with one leg (front-outside) which is *extremely* annoying to reach (I'm walking on the edge of the kiting path, so there are bad zones and at time the leg ends out of the encounter area so it is out of range), is there any better kiting path / DPSing position?

The bosses front left is typically dps'ed down by the tanks for us (outside of the initial run in).

Helistar wrote:- we've had situations where the boss turns around and insta-gibs the raid with the frontal AoE attack, even if the current pheromone target is alive and well, is this a know problem?

We've also had some wonky issues with the guy, but nothing consistent enough to figure out why. Also hasn't happened to us since the first day of attempts. /shrug

Helistar wrote:- Wild charge works, but I'm positive I triggered a crush at least once, while crossing the violet zone quite deeply. I wonder if the "collision check" with the violet zone is done every couple of seconds or so, with the result that doing a long trajectory inside the zone can trigger it. It could also have been that I landed with one paw inside the circle since the charge brings you to the position of the target when it's cast, maybe if the boss moves while I'm flying bad things happen.....

I've never had the balls to WC through the purple zone. I have FC'ed from the same 'side' but never through it. People have said here it works but I'm still too scared, rofl.

Helistar wrote:- we kite it on the edge of the room, with one leg (front-outside) which is *extremely* annoying to reach (I'm walking on the edge of the kiting path, so there are bad zones and at time the leg ends out of the encounter area so it is out of range), is there any better kiting path / DPSing position?

This is the same kiting strategy we use. We have the ranged exclusively hit the two legs that are always furthest from the center of the room (the legs along the walls/kiting path). As a melee with a silly amount of self heals I can always hit 3 of the legs. The two close to the center (obvious) and the back leg that is close to the wall. The final leg I don't even bother with since it's normally covered in pheromone trails and it's also uncomfortably close to Garalon's cleave. We were at one point only letting our two rogues hit the easily accessible melee legs, but now that Blizz changed (or is changing?) the cleave mechanics of abilities like Blade Flurry I'm not going to feel bad about padding my damage. =D

Helistar wrote:- Wild charge works, but I'm positive I triggered a crush at least once, while crossing the violet zone quite deeply. I wonder if the "collision check" with the violet zone is done every couple of seconds or so, with the result that doing a long trajectory inside the zone can trigger it. It could also have been that I landed with one paw inside the circle since the charge brings you to the position of the target when it's cast, maybe if the boss moves while I'm flying bad things happen.....

I'm too scared to use WC during this fight and with the amount of movement you need to do anyway I think you still gain quite a bit of use with FS..

aggixx wrote:I found Soul Swap to be the go to for Symbiosis on this fight, with our strategy we had melee on legs most of time but occasionally we would have time to sit on the boss.

It's key to understand how Soul Swap interacts with the damage zones on this encounter. The damage buff only increases your damage to the leg who's zone you are standing in, meaning that if you swap your bleeds off a leg onto the boss they will recalculate and no longer be doing double damage. On the other side of this coin, if you have bleeds on the boss or on another leg, and you wait to soul swap them onto a new leg until AFTER you have enter that leg's damage zone, they WILL be affected by the damage multiplier.

Because of this I ended up Soul Swapping any bleeds I had gotten on the boss onto the new leg as soon as I was in the damage zone to achieve higher double damage bleed uptime. I also found it beneficial to sometimes is it to swap bleeds off of a dying leg onto the boss, but to me this seemed like less of a priority so you have to do it with caution.

I've been trying to use Soul Swap to switch from a dying leg to a new leg. When I try I get "invalid target" and can't do the swap. Is anyone else getting the same problem?

aggixx wrote:I found Soul Swap to be the go to for Symbiosis on this fight, with our strategy we had melee on legs most of time but occasionally we would have time to sit on the boss.

It's key to understand how Soul Swap interacts with the damage zones on this encounter. The damage buff only increases your damage to the leg who's zone you are standing in, meaning that if you swap your bleeds off a leg onto the boss they will recalculate and no longer be doing double damage. On the other side of this coin, if you have bleeds on the boss or on another leg, and you wait to soul swap them onto a new leg until AFTER you have enter that leg's damage zone, they WILL be affected by the damage multiplier.

Because of this I ended up Soul Swapping any bleeds I had gotten on the boss onto the new leg as soon as I was in the damage zone to achieve higher double damage bleed uptime. I also found it beneficial to sometimes is it to swap bleeds off of a dying leg onto the boss, but to me this seemed like less of a priority so you have to do it with caution.

I've been trying to use Soul Swap to switch from a dying leg to a new leg. When I try I get "invalid target" and can't do the swap. Is anyone else getting the same problem?

The only reason I would think is because the previous leg has died and you were too late.

I think the issue has to do with a LONG standing bug from Cata. If you recall you are suposed to be able to use combo points that were still on a dead target. The issue is if the target dies and does not leave a body those combo points are gone. Some examples, Sons on Rag, Bloods on Deathwing fights. Because the legs vanish when killed the bleeds on them likely vanish as well.

archury wrote:Displacer beast is a DPS increase over WC, assuming you can aim. I don't bother.

I am secptical about this claim. I assume it's so you can Ravage a leg? With the amount of damage going out I doubt you would be able to stay stealthed long enough to pull a Ravage off. Also DB has x2 the cooldown of WC.

We do this fight a bit differently than most I assume. We have specific "cleave" melee killing the legs while myself, and Ret Pallys stay on the boss full time. I use Soul Swap from Boss to Legs when one of the back legs is alive.

We just started on Garalon today, had a few attempts, lowest we got him was around 47%. This is 25man normal.

What they told us melee is to stand in the middle with the ranged (in healing circles etc) when all legs are dead. That means that I mostly use Mangle instead of Shred on the body. It's no big deal, since there are legs up most of the time, I just wanted to know if that's the usual strategy? It makes sense in terms of healing, but at the same time it deprives us of Shred.

-Sibylle

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." (Brendan Gill)

Stand in the middle? Inside the purple circle on the ground? You're going to get many many crushes if you're taking that approach - middle of the room is a waste of dps too.

Sounds like your healers and ranged need to not have lead feet - there's no harm in moving around the room with everyone else. Quick swapping dps to legs and getting them down ASAP is key to this fight however any dps on Garalon helps.

Just on the soul swap discussion - has anyone noticed that sub 25% on Garalon only rake is transferred when going from Garalon > Leg? Usually what I'm aiming to do is SS both rip and rake to a leg with 3-4 CP still on Garalon, before I switch apply a fresh rake and rip to Garalon and then dps the leg while maintaining the rip with FBs where appropriate. Both bleeds have no issues transferring to the legs outside of execute range.